This morning, a tiny patch travelled to Dota-land with only one goal in mind: to inscribe Tundra Esports’ name on the Aegis of Champions in the game. The names of the winners of The International 2022 made it safely onto the Aegis, but Valve made a mistake in listing the team as an Eastern European representative.
Though Tundra Esports has players from Eastern Europe, The United Kingdom-based organization has been a staple name in the Western European Dota Pro Circuit. Even before its foundation, Tundra’s players actively participated in the WEU DPC, meaning they never stepped foot onto Eastern European Dota soil.
Valve will need to prepare a second update to fix the TI11 winner’s region and potentially consider picking up a world map for the office. The chances of this being a software error are also highly likely, thanks to last year’s champions, Team Spirit, being from Eastern Europe.
While adding the new information on the Aegis, Valve could have forgotten to include a region, causing the game to automatically use the region of the previous champions, Eastern Europe.
Considering Valve just reaffirmed its commitment to the competitive Dota 2 scene last month, it’ll surely need to step up its game and knowledge of teams to provide the best competitive experience for viewers and competitors. An issue of this caliber can easily be overlooked, but it also showcases a possible lack of motivation and attention to detail.
Dota 2 makes up a small portion of Valve’s balance sheet as the corporation takes home billions from its other operations. More commitment to the scene is unlikely to increase Valve’s Dota 2 revenue by a high margin, but it would allow it to make the day of millions of Dota fans around the who are part of a culture that is decades old.